At Pyramid Lake

"At Pyramid Lake details the social, cultural, and environmental history of this unique desert terminus lake, located forty miles northeast of Reno. Pyramid Lake has long been a site of allure and contestation. For the Paiutes, it has been a spiritual center that provides life-sustaining resources, such as the Lahontan cutthroat trout that are unique to it. For artists and writers, it has been a place of mysticism and inspiration. For ranchers and farmers, the waters that flow into it have been necessaryfor cattle and crops. For tourists and sports enthusiasts, it has been a special playground. Bernard Mergen uses an interdisciplinary approach to explore how these many interests have interacted with the lake and with each other. He combines his own personal understandings of lake (he lived briefly near its shores in the 1930s and 1940s and still visits often) with sources about it that include published and unpublished manuscripts, newspapers and magazines, novels and poetry, and conversations. Written in an accessible style, At Pyramid Lake is both a history and a tribute to one of northern Nevada's most fascinating features"--